SUN$HINE

Performed at BodyVox Dance Center in Portland, Nov. 9th-11th, 2012. Choreographed by Tahni Holt along with performers: Lucy Yim, Robert Tyree, Suzanne Chi with an original musical score by Thomas Thorson, performed by Thorson and Kyleen King. Costumes by Kate Fenker and lighting design by Jeff Forbes. SUN$HINE’S visual economy is driven by principles of fashion, minimalism, glamour, and mass production. Nomadic pile of cardboard transform the visual composition, framing the dance disparately from moment to moment, and evoking a rich stew of relationships. The performers battle against the desire to locate themselves in one paradigm, one story, one translation. They commit to the drawing of perpetual renewal: where multiple translations exist at once. SUN$HINE seduces many logics into embodiment: architecture, little cities, modern abstract sculpture, volcanoes, nature-scapes and urban-scapes. Industrial space, punk rock aesthetics, homeless camps, forts, locations and displacements. Monsters, garbage, consumption, brand identity, mass producing recyclable material, rectangles, measurement of volume, storage.

Artist statement:

The project arrived out of a general interest in the complex relationship between literal, metaphorical, psychological, representational and associative lenses attached to movement performance.

That interest lead me to ask a number of questions: Is it possible to create a performance where the audience’s imagination is tapped into and used as another resource for the work, possibly accepting a shift in the conventional power structure of the artist/audience relationship? Is it possible to create a performance that contains enough signifiers to enter into an intentional symbolic space, yet remains resolutely open to its own transformation through the encounter with this unruly force of imagination? Is it possible to create a performance that insists on being experienced through multiple and conflicting lenses at once?

These questions are vital because they aim to deepen our understanding of the way in which dance can produce the intricate array of almost-effable affects which are peculiar to its form. To this end, I am interested in observing and challenging how viewers relate themselves to what they experience–likewise, I am interested in creating performative structures that, as a dancer/performer, are challenging and at times impossible.